After sharing habitat with parrot fish, barracudas and Goliath groupers for more than four months in 2011, the art was removed from its unusual exhibit site — the deck of the USNS Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg shipwreck.

The silicone seals did not work perfectly, allowing seawater seepage on the sides of the photos, and the Plexiglas was covered with algae, microorganisms and marine-life skeletons.

But when photographer Andreas Franke saw the results, he was not upset.

“Look how cool it is,” he says. “Now it’s unique. You can’t reproduce this because of the help of Mother Nature.”

Franke’s underwater art can now be seen without SCUBA gear at The Studios of Key West in a free exhibit, Vandenberg Project: The Life Above Refined Below, through Feb. 15.